Meals on Wheels more than food — company and a smile

A disabled pilot opens a prepared meal at his home in Portland, Ore., July 12, 2010. Meals on Wheels has been the subject of many peer-reviewed studies in the medical literature, most of which show that the program improves the quality of people’s diet, increases their nutrient intake and reduces their food insecurity and nutritional risk. less

A disabled pilot opens a prepared meal at his home in Portland, Ore., July 12, 2010. Meals on Wheels has been the subject of many peer-reviewed studies in the medical literature, most of which show that the ... more

Photo: LEAH NASH /NYT

Photo: LEAH NASH /NYT

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A disabled pilot opens a prepared meal at his home in Portland, Ore., July 12, 2010. Meals on Wheels has been the subject of many peer-reviewed studies in the medical literature, most of which show that the program improves the quality of people’s diet, increases their nutrient intake and reduces their food insecurity and nutritional risk. less

A disabled pilot opens a prepared meal at his home in Portland, Ore., July 12, 2010. Meals on Wheels has been the subject of many peer-reviewed studies in the medical literature, most of which show that the ... more

Every Tuesday, Alma would drive to at least nine and at most a dozen homes of people who qualified for Meals on Wheels deliveries. She’d knock on their front doors, greet the meal recipient with a smile and, often, she’d share a quick chat about the weather, the food or their health.

Meanwhile, she’d give them their lunch, in this case a freezer meal-ready-to-microwave and be off. Boyce’s apartment was one of the stops on her run.

Boyce was a friendly man who had trouble hearing; he was grateful for the meal delivery but more so for the company. Alma told me about how he’d talk to her as long as he could before she had to move on to the next stop, stretching every minute of conversation as far as possible.

Over time, he got comfortable with the nice woman who brought him lunch and a smile once a week. Once, he asked her for a loan so he could buy cigarettes. He asked her if she’d like to join him for dinner at a nearby Golden Corral — he had a coupon!

He wrote her a long letter telling her about his parents and how, when he was just a little boy, his mother would say he’d cheated death three times already; he wrote about the many children and grandchildren who all lived far away. He made her a bracelet out of plastic beads. He asked her for a ride to the grocery store. He proposed.

She only knew Boyce in the context of the meal delivery, and such a tiny window hardly reveals the whole story of another person’s life.

But over time, she recognized his good days and bad days, as volunteer drivers do when the people on their route are social. And she knew that this brief exchange — the handing over of a frozen meal, the delivery of a kind smile, the stopwatch chitchat — was a big deal to this smiling man who lived alone.

It meant that someone cared enough to bring food that might keep him out of the hospital and a nursing home. It meant that someone cared enough that he was still alive. It was a reason to comb his hair.

“I admired,” she told me, “his boldness and his need to not be lonely.”

According to Meals on Wheels America, Meals on Wheels services are provided directly to seniors by a nationwide network of 5,000 local community-run programs that, in the aggregate, receive 35 percent of their funding from the federal government.

“One quarter of today’s 65-year-olds,” the organization’s website reports, “will live past the age of 90 and will experience many of their daily chores turning into insurmountable everyday challenges.”

Meals on Wheels has been at the forefront of the news lately as critics of President Trump’s budget plan rail against proposed cuts that could threaten Meals on Wheels.

The response has been that it’s become a political poster child because while the federal government doesn’t directly fund the organization that provides nutrition, a daily wellness check and purpose, it can be blamed for cutting the dollars that won’t trickle down.

Maybe. But it’s not just about the food.

As the stopwatch ticks, perhaps we’ll find the time, boldness and need to meet this insurmountable challenge.